


Gordon: Select Yes

by VioletThePorama



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, But minor/unfocused on, Character Study, Dissociation, Dr. Coomer is mentioned, Gen, HLVRAI, I'm so sorry for cluttering up the halflife tag, Self-Harm, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25454368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletThePorama/pseuds/VioletThePorama
Summary: Gordon is finally free from the game, but what does that mean going forward?Post Chuck E Cheese party (it's a restaurant), Gordon is a free man.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 54





	Gordon: Select Yes

The moment he pulled himself away from the Science Team and pushed his way out the glass doors of the Chuck E Cheese, everything around him faded away. It was similar to when Gordon slept. He was met with resounding darkness rather than dreams, and stuck in place, unable to progress or move on. The only difference was that he was still awake and aware this time around. 

Gordon felt for the ground, but found himself weightless. There was nothing beneath him, and no matter how much he tried to reach out, he was unable to feel anything in his immediate vicinity. Even the bulkiness of his HEV suit felt light. Suspiciously so. When he reached to press against his chest, he found nothing there.

Suddenly terrified, uncertain if the problem was him being unable to feel his arms, or a  _ lack _ of a torso, Gordon bellowed out a scream. The silence that answered him was deafening. He screeched into the empty, but he couldn’t feel his throat or vocal cords, and couldn’t ensure that he was really making any noise. 

Left voiceless and floating, he turned his attention to the only thing that seemed to remain; his thoughts. But no explanation for his predicament came to mind. Scrambling for some other answer, Gordon forced his eyes wide and swiveled his head around, though he couldn’t feel even that. It was all for naught, as none of it seemed to make a difference to the blankness he found himself in. He looked down to see if he could make anything out from the dim glow of his HEV suit, but all light seemed to have been swallowed up, absorbed into the infinite expanse of the universe. He was met with nothing, floating aimlessly in an abyss.

Slowly, after a seemingly endless torment of numb, Gordon felt something hit his torso. A dull ache throbbed in his chest where there had been nothing there before. He tried to wince, but couldn’t yet feel his face. Suddenly, he felt like he was suffocating and gave a sharp inhale of cold, sharp air as he remembered how to breathe. 

Gordon felt himself blink, and the sound of static overcame his hearing. He drew back from it, and was shocked to find that his limbs responded, slow, slow, slowly like molasses. They moved in front of him, newly visible and bright against the dark, though there were still no light sources around for them to be seen by. His left arm curled close to his chest, and his right arm rose instinctively, poised defensively and pointed out into the dark. Gordon slowly tipped forward and peered at his legs, half bent underneath him. 

Feeling hopeful, he tried to speak, but all it did was blast feedback at him, loud and sudden enough to make him flinch again. As he shifted in response, his limbs began to tingle like they had been asleep. Gordon took another sharp breath, and straightened his legs. 

They touched down on some sort of floor. He promptly fell over, sprawled on the ground of wherever he was located. Then, he reached up, and he took off his headset. 

The next thing Gordon was aware of was a stinging pain as he clawed into the flesh of his arm, and the feeling of his stomach forcibly emptying itself onto his carpet.

______________________________________________

He was back. Gordon was in his apartment.The sound of music leaked out of his computer as the game played through its credits.

He took stock of what had happened. Both of his arms were there, though one of them felt numb and unfamiliar and had to be guided by his left as he shakily stood and checked his phone. It was the same date he remembered opening up the game on, and it was mid-afternoon, which is probably when he’d first begun it- and he checked the year just to be safe. It was the same. No time had passed.

_ No time had passed no time had passed not _ **_imepassed while hewasin thegame_ **

Gordon swallowed and became aware of how sore his throat was, and how gross his mouth tasted. Hopefully he hadn’t actually been screaming while he was in that void, though he sort of doubted it. Skirting around the mess he had made when first exiting the game, Gordon left his room and stepped into his kitchen to grab some water. 

He downed it like a starving man. A dehydrated man? Nothing but soda and scavenged junk food for such a prolonged time had made him crave water like nothing else- 

Except… no time had passed. He couldn’t remember what he had drunk or consumed before playing. That brought up the question of whether or not the game had affected him at all. Next stop; the bathroom.

Gordon haphazardly set his glass down, and immediately knocked it to the floor as he turned to go. That could be left for later. He half sprinted and half fell against walls in his haste to get to a mirror. When he was finally in front of one, he dry heaved into the sink for a solid minute before he could focus on his reflection. 

His hair was frizzy and ruffled as ever, but his beard was recently maintained in such a way that would have been impossible in Black Mesa. Scars and scratches that should have marred his face were missing and Gordon realized abruptly that he felt rather empty without them. Without evidence of what he had been through. His face was like a blank canvas. The poorly healed scrape at his collarbone was missing, too. He raised his left arm, searching for bruises that should have littered it, or the calluses on his hands, but it was all missing. 

He should be happy. 

Gordon returned to the kitchen in a haze, and bent down to pick up the larger pieces of glass from the cold tiles. His hands shook as he piled them into the palm of his hand and stood. Then he dropped them and sank back down as he remembered he had a broom for a reason. Taking a seat, he decided it was alright to give himself a moment. 

Aside from the sounds he had produced when vomiting, Gordon had yet to try his voice again, afraid it would be beyond him somehow. That it would be locked away, out of reach. 

A dull pain traveled up his arm, and he looked down to see that his right hand had slammed itself down into the pile of glass. Lifting it up let some of the shimmering specs of broken glass fall from his hand. Slowly squeezing that hand into a fist made more rain down onto the floor. Small little trails of blood ran down the sides of his hand like tiny rivers. When he raised his fist into the air, they dripped down his arm. He could almost feel it. 

______________________________________________

Gordon, with a newly bandaged hand (he had some old bandages. They were expired somehow, but were still in their packaging, so he had deemed them safe enough to use for the moment. Safer than giant pools of green sludge, anyway.), a newly cleaned kitchen and room, and a newly cleared schedule (calling out of work had been an afterthought. If it hadn’t been for a notification about being needed tomorrow, he wouldn’t have remembered. It had been amazingly easy to convince his coworkers to cover for him. He didn’t want to think about how despondent he must have sounded.), stood in front of his computer. His immediate instinct had been to raise his faintly throbbing hand and point it at the device to shoot it. When that, for obvious reasons, hadn’t worked, he had considered the alternative measure of grabbing a hammer and obliterating it. 

Then, the notification of something in his files flashed in his peripherals. He tabbed over to it, and stared at the audio file. It was titled ‘DR COOMER’.

Accepting that he had been sucked into a video game was hardly the most outlandish thing he could have imagined. Especially after having spent so much time inside of it. He had  _ known _ that he was in a video game. He remembered being inside, amazed at how lifelike it felt before he discovered that he was  _ stuck _ . There were no settings to find, no save points, and no taking off the VR set. Roleplaying along with the NPC’s became more of a desperate bid for socialization and support so he didn’t lose his mind in the labyrinth that was Black Mesa. 

No, he had no doubts that he had been stuck inside of the game. It wasn’t a dream. It  _ couldn’t _ have been. Not with everything that had happened. So he clicked on the file. 

He listened to the message, and was sickeningly glad that he happened to share a name with the protagonist of the series. Yes, yes, he was Gordon. He hadn’t lied to them. He had made it through. He beat the game.

_ “I assume you’ll… shut it down. Move on with your life, onwards and upwards, eh Gordon?” _

Oh. 

_ “Must this really be the end of our time together?” _

The NPC’s had hardly stayed simple programs. Immediately upon his entry, they had gone off script. Select ones, based on the old characters of the game for the most part. At first, Gordon had convinced himself that they were just AI. He hadn’t stayed convinced of that for long. 

_ “I hope you won’t forget us.” _

Gordon clicked into a web browser while the message finished off. He searched for other reviews of the game. For somebody else with his experience. 

There was nothing. 

_ “Goodbye Gordon.” _

He made his way through a number of articles, but was left at a dead end. Skimming through a streamed play of the game left him reeling at how different the game was supposed to have been. Why him? Why was Gordon the one to end up with the glitched, hellish game? Why was  _ he _ the one left alone?

And what could he do about it?

Slowly, Gordon got up. He went to the bathroom and properly cleaned out the cuts on his hand, taking a few moments to get out any glass he could see (rather than feel. His hand still seemed tingly and mostly offline, even if it looked normal.). Then he rebandaged it and grabbed some more water from the kitchen, being careful to put the glass into the sink rather than dropping it again. He ate a few bites of an apple he had on the counter, and returned to his computer. There were some friends that Gordon had to help out. 

**[Would you like to play again?]**

**[Y/N]**

**Author's Note:**

> I got way too focused on this comedy series. The implications of everything. It isn't that deep. But the earth is soft and I want to dig, or however that tweet went. 
> 
> So I went 'maybe if I write something for it I'll stop focusing on it so much'. We'll see how that works out. 
> 
> Also, I've never played Half-Life before. You can probably tell.


End file.
